Lenten Prayer

O Lord my God,
teach my heart this day where and how to see You,
where and how to find You.

You have made me and remade me,
and You have bestowed on me
all the good things I possess,
and still I do not know You.
I have not yet done that
for which I was made.

Teach me to seek You,
for I cannot seek You
unless You teach me,
or find You
unless You show Yourself to me.

Let me seek You in my desire,
Let me desire You in my seeking.
Let me find You by loving You,
Let me love You when I find You.

--Prayer of St. Anselm

Felix Culpa

“God alone can make forgiveness something glorious to remember”

“God alone can forgive sins.”
Above and beyond its juridical meaning,
we must read this statement
as a sort of description of God.
Only He “knows how” to pardon.

We surely don’t.
According to the old saw, women forgive but never forget.
And as for men, theyre so self-centered
they forget
and very rarely take time, thought or trouble to forgive.
All in all, human forgiveness is a crushing thing,
an unpleasant memory
we can’t shake off.

The superiority of those who grant pardon
utterly quashes those who receive it.
There’s forgiveness, but no reassurance,
no consolation,
no encouragement.
God’s the only one who can manage all four together.

You see, forgiving kindly entails humiliating oneself.
The prodigal’s father doesn’t want to hear another word about the whole episode.
He gives a banquet.
That’s how God does it, too.
He alone can make forgiveness
something glorious to remember.
He’s so glad to absolve us
that those who’ve afforded Him that joy feel,
not like disagreeable, troublesome pests,
but like pampered children,
understood and heartened,
pleasing and useful to Him,
and infinitely better than they thought.
“O happy fault!” they could cry.
“If we weren’t sinners
and didn’t need pardon more than bread,
we’d have no way of knowing
how deep God’s love is.”*

Louis Evely

*Emphasis mine

Till We Have Faces

Currently listening to one of my favorite books, and definitely my favorite Lewis book. If you have somehow not yet read this, go read it now. Go on. Do you honestly think my blog might be better?

It is The Four Loves woven into fiction. I am continually astounded at how he can take such an old myth and retell it brand new and old all at once. You read it, and think, “oh, that’s the way the Psyche myth was supposed to go.” It is extremely rare me to find a retelling better than the original.

When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"

It leaves me wondering what speech lies at the center of my soul; what awful truth in myself have I not yet recognized as being my “real” thoughts and emotions. How do I know I am not as deceived about myself as Orual was about herself?

Joy Is The Fundamental Thing

The strange and wonderful turn my life has taken in the past month has really made me reflect on God’s excessive goodness. It’s rather strange--until recently, I rather doubted God’s goodness. Oh, of course, I knew God is good in theory and believed it in theory. But I can’t say that I’d ever felt overwhelmed with joy because of His goodness. And it is one thing to believe something is the case without having experienced it, and another thing to believe it because you have experienced it. The latter belief is much more solid. This is not to say that I thought God had never been good to me--of course He had, and probably much more so than I realized. It’s just hard to feel overwhelming gratitude that God has provided dinner when you’ve never gone hungry.

Sunday’s festivities have me reflecting on joy because that entire day was one drawn-out experience of joy. I cannot recall a day that would be its equal. Once again, I feel like God does good things in excess: take flowers, for instance.

This world would still be a beautiful place without flowers. There are many amazing plants in a variety of colors, not to mention birds and bugs in all colors--this world would still be bright and colorful. Flowers are not necessary to enjoying life or this earth. And yet....is not one’s joy in nature the greater for there being flowers in it? We generally don’t eat them, make them into clothing or medicine, or use them for any practical purpose, but there is still real joy to be had in seeing them, picking them, giving them to others and receiving them as a gift. I always eagerly await the first daffodils and crocuses in the spring as heralds of a promise of goodness yet to come, and I always experience a shock of joy when I receive flowers as a gift.

Sunday was not my birthday; I did not receive any gifts and no one made me food or planned activities I might enjoy, but from the time I left my house in the morning before church until the time I went to bed, it was one grand experience of joy: the joy of giving to another what it is a delight to give. There were so many little things that brought me joy that day, that, if they had not been there, would not have left a feeling of disappointment at their lack, but their presence provided one more added delight. Is this really what God is like? I feel like Sunday’s experiences, and my recent life as a whole are just a hint of the way things are supposed to be. I don’t know if I am quite explaining myself clearly, so I’ll let one of my favorite authors sum things up for me:

“Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live.....

“Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small.”

Amen! I trust that Chesterton has it right. It’s the sort of thing that I felt instinctively to be the case, even when my experiences in life didn’t show it to be so. But for once, my experiences match that promise. Just think: we still only know in part and see in part--yet to come is the time when we shall know and see fully, even as we are fully known and seen. All the joy that any of us have yet experienced or will experience in this life, may be but a shadow of the true thing, the real joy yet to come.

Trying to Think Live Things

I don't have time for a thoughtful post, so I decided to substitute a thoughtful quote from one of my favorite books: George MacDonald's Lilith:

"How can a pigeon be a prayer?" I said. "I understand, of course, how it should be a fit symbol or likeness for one; but a live pigeon to come out of a heart!"

"It MUST puzzle you! It cannot fail to do so!"

"A prayer is a thought, a thing spiritual!" I pursued.

"Very true! But if you understood any world besides your own, you would understand your own much better.--When a heart is really alive, then it is able to think live things. There is one heart all whose thoughts are strong, happy creatures, and whose very dreams are lives. When some pray, they lift heavy thoughts from the ground, only to drop them on it again; others send up their prayers in living shapes, this or that, the nearest likeness to each. All live things were thoughts to begin with, and are fit therefore to be used by those that think. When one says to the great Thinker:-- "Here is one of thy thoughts: I am thinking it now!" that is a prayer--a word to the big heart from one of its own little hearts."

The Goodness of God

I have been overwhelmed lately with God’s flagrant goodness towards me. My cup indeed runneth over. It’s almost odd—my life was going very well already, especially with my all important decision to finish my degree. That was a huge gift. And even though I’m not progressing as fast as I’d like to, I am progressing in my reading. Also, it seemed that socially my life was going well: I had good friends active in my life and also people that I am slowly getting to know better that I would like to become good friends.

Then, out of the blue, God apparently decides He hasn’t actually overwhelmed me with blessings lately, so He brings another good gift into my life. I guess this shouldn’t surprise me (the goodness of God, that is—probably my whole readership knows that the actually event surprised me very much), but it’s one thing to know something in theory, it’s completely different to experience it.

I think flagrant goodness is very much a part of God’s character. Not simply goodness, but excessive and outrageous goodness. Have you ever looked at the sky on a clear sunny day in the middle of summer? Doesn’t it seem excessively blue?? I don’t mean in a bad way, but in a wow, I’m amazed at the intense bright blueness of the sky. Then, of course, there are all those examples from the Bible (like the people Jesus healed) and from the lives of people we know.

I always try to imagine what it must have felt like, after living for one’s whole life as a cripple, being suddenly made whole. Instantly, it would be like stepping into an entirely new universe, but one lovingly familiar. You would love your friends more if you could walk (or run), unaided, to their houses. You would love your little thatched cottage more when you could enter and leave it on a mere whim. Eating could be an excessively joyful event if you could now use both hands, or sit up in a chair like everyone else, or even cook your own dinner. There is something truly fabulous about having very ordinary events become suddenly momentous and joyful.

I know that this shiny feeling is temporary, and that’s probably just as well. My friends can only be expected to endure my giddiness for so long. But I’m glad that for a little while at least, I can be overwhelmed with gratitude for God’s excessive and flagrant goodness.